This invention relates in general to the field of transmission and reception of facsimiles and electronic mail, and more particularly to a system and method for transmitting a fax to an e-mail address.
Prior to facsimile (Fax) machines and electronic mail (e-mail) accounts, persons and businesses who desired to send written communications to another person or business were forced to produce the written communication and send it to the recipient via a traditional delivery method. These traditional delivery methods included hand delivery, United States Postal Service delivery, or a third party service to deliver the written communication. These prior methods were time consuming for both the sender and recipient. In addition, the delivery process itself could take several days.
An improvement to the prior delivery methods was the introduction of the fax machine. The fax machine was capable of scanning a document and converting that document into a digital, or bit-mapped, image. That image was then transmitted across the public switched telephone network (PSTN) utilizing an appropriate telephony communication protocol. The digitized document is referred to as a facsimile, or fax. The recipient of the fax was required to have a fax machine in order to receive the fax communication. This allowed instantaneous transmission of documents, but required both the sender and recipient to have a fax machine attached to the PSTN.
Another improvement to the prior delivery methods was the introduction of widespread Internet electronic mail accounts. The Internet is a landline based system which is separate from the PSTN and uses an Internet Protocol for communications rather than one of the telephony communication protocols. The reason for this difference is that telephony communication protocols are designed for the transmission of voice communications whereas the Internet Protocol is designed for transmission of data communications. Since the transmission of written communications is primarily a data transmission function, the Internet Protocol is better suited to this task. However, sending and receiving e-mail requires both the sender and the recipient to have a computer with modem attached to a computer network such as the Internet.
Intranets are similar to the Internet except that access is not open to the public. Intranets are generally used to connect businesses, corporations, or universities which have several local area networks in diverse locations which require communications between the nodes attached to each local area network. Intranets utilize communications protocols similar to the Internet.
Current technology utilizes computers to transmit text messages to other persons via the Internet or Intranet. However, if one wishes to send a fax from a computer, the computer must have special software and a fax board.
Fax transmissions and e-mail transmissions follow different signal paths and use incompatible technologies. For example, a person with a fax machine cannot send a fax to an e-mail account, and a person who is capable of sending e-mail messages cannot send an e-mail message to a fax machine.
Due to the aforementioned problems, current methods of electronically transmitting written communications are incompatible and require the purchase and maintenance of separate machines to transmit a fax or an e-mail message.
From the foregoing, it may be appreciated that a need has arisen for an improved system and method for transmitting a fax to an e-mail address. In accordance with the present invention, a system and method for transmitting a fax to an e-mail address is provided which substantially eliminates or reduces disadvantages and problems associated with supporting these incompatible technologies.
According to one embodiment of the present invention, there is provided a fax/e-mail server with a fax interceptor which is capable of receiving a fax transmission from a source fax machine. The fax/e-mail server through its scanning module locates one or more e-mail addresses within the received fax transmission. The fax/e-mail server also contains an e-mail creator which generates an e-mail to the e-mail addresses and attaches the fax for transmission to the e-mail addresses. Finally, the fax/e-mail server contains an e-mail sender which transmits the generated faxes to the e-mail addresses.
The present invention provides various technical advantages over current text communication technologies. For example, one technical advantage is to eliminate the need for the recipient of the communication to have a similar machine in order to receive and view the communication. Another technical advantage is to eliminate the need for additional hardware and software in a computer in order to make the computer operable to receive and send fax communications. Other examples may be readily ascertainable by those skilled in the art from the following figures, description, and claims.